UAF Cooperative Extension Service. Extending knowledge,
changing lives.
Do you know if your livestock are in good condition
or how do you know if your nutrition program is doing what you had hoped?
Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Lunn, Extension Veterinarian
for University of Alaska Fairbanks and I'd like to take a moment to talk to you
about body condition scoring of livestock.
Body condition score oftentimes abbreviated BCS
is a way for us to estimate the fat reserves on an animal.
Animals use these fat reserves during times of peak energy usage such as
peak milk production, late pregnancy, extreme winter conditions,
and breeding season. Then animals
that don't have enough body condition have trouble becoming pregnant.
Sheep won't have twins as often as they normally would.
Over-conditioned animals may have problems giving birth because the birth canal may
become
infiltrated with fat or they make have fatty liver disease and have metabolic
problems.
Body condition scoring is an active process where we actually have to
palpate the animal.
This is important because it's inaccurate if you sometimes just look
out in the pasture, you may not be able to tell
the actual fat coverage of the animals. For animals that have a heavy winter
coat
or for sheep or llamas and alpacas that have wool or fiber,
they may appear larger and fatter than what you would anticipate if you actually
palpated the animal.
Also it's difficult to compare different framed animals.
If you have a calf or an adult cow, the frame size differences
may make them appear fatter or skinnier, and so it's important that we actually
get our hands on their
and palpate the landmarks so that we know exactly how much fat coverage they have.
Most livestock have body conditions scored on a scale of one to five,
but beef cattle, camelids, and some other
sub-species are done on a one to nine scale. The scale itself isn't all that
important.
What you need to know is that a body condition score of 1
is an emaciated, extremely thin animal.
A body condition score of 5 or nine, if you're using a 1 to 9 score,
is obese and that animal is way too over- conditioned.
Realistically, we want most of our livestock to be between a three,
perhaps a 4 at the most. That's gonna give them the optimum health.
So within a herd, most of your
animals are gonna fall between a 2 and a 4, and that's going to be okay.
We want to avoid the extremes of 1's and 5's.
To body condition score your livestock, it's best to have them restrained, so
that you can have
the safety of being able to palpate them. For cattle
we often use a shoot. If you're doing sheep or goats you may have somebody hold the
animal
for you or put it in a milking stand, so it'll be easy to hold its still.
To palpate there's five specific areas that we want to look at.
One is the top line or the back, you're gonna run your hand along their and
feel for the bone, and try to estimate how much
coverage is over that. We also feel along the rib cage,
on the ribs, over the hipbone, over the pin bones,
and over the tail head, specifically looking at how much spaces between the
tail
and the pin bones. So when you're feeling this, you wanna push
in, feel for the bone, and try to estimate
how much coverage is above their. So for an animal that's a body condition score
one, you're gonna feel a lot of bone and just skin on top of it.
For an animal that has a body condition of 5, when you push in,
it's difficult to feel the bones. Now if this
worries you and you're not sure that you know how estimate that,
you're gonna have a handy trick to take with you and it's your hand.
So make a fist, you're gonna take your fingers and run it over your knuckles.
That's what a body condition score one feels like,
bone, but not a lot of flesh over it. If you turn your hand slightly in, go over
the back of your hand,
that's going to be a body condition score of 3. You can feel the bone if you
press down,
but there's enough less covering it that the bone is not obvious.
And then if you flip your hand over, the fleshy part underneath your thumb,
that's a body condition score of five. You can't really feel the bone.
It's very fleshy, very squishy,
and that's very similar to what a body condition score of five would be.
Ideally, you should body condition score your herd several times a year.
Now, in the beginning stages, if you're unsure of what you're doing,
just take time to palpate the animal. It's not important for you to be exact
and know the difference between three and three and a half,
but it is important for you to understand a body condition score of 2
versus a body condition score of 4. Once you've done that, and you've got
numbers for your animals,
take those numbers and put them into the herd health book that you've established for your
animals.
And when you re-body condition score them again,
refer back to those previous numbers to see if there's been a change.
Going from a body condition score of 4 to a 2,
losing body weight, that may indicate that there's an
issue with parasites on the farm or perhaps the
nutrition in the diet isn't energy dense. So you may need to contact
your veterinarian to help investigate those issues.
Conversely, going from a 2 to a body condition score of 4 or 5
may indicate that you're over feeding those animals, and we may need to adjust
the diet again.
As you become more experienced, you should be able to body condition score
several animals within a minute, so this is not a very time-consuming process.
Whether you're a full-time farmer or a backyard enthusiast,
it's important that you know and understand body condition scoring of
livestock
so that you can have a better idea if your animals are healthy
and if they're in a good plane of nutrition. For more information on body
condition scoring
and other animal-related issues, please visit the University of Alaska Fairbanks
Cooperative Extension Service website.